The play Hayani (“home” in Venda) is an evocative recollection of childhood by actor and director John Kani’s son, Atandwa, and Nat Ramabulana.
Atandwa Kani is originally from New Brighton in Port Elizabeth, while Ramabulana hails from Thohoyandou. As is the norm in these kinds of stories, memory of childhood is infused with the motifs of parents and journeys — actual journeys as they go back to their ancestral homes and the journey of growing up.
The two’s recollection of childhood is peppered with the memory of journey, recreated on the set by a painting of a sketch of the road from Port Elizabeth, passing through Johannesburg, right to Limpopo in the north. The privileged Kani went home in his family’s blue Mercedes-Benz; Ramabulana, on the other hand, went crammed in a taxi journey that began at Joubert Park taxi rank in central Johannesburg and ended in the hot, unforgiving landscape of Limpopo.
Their fathers are a constant, pervasive presence, and in this production, this presence is acknowledged by paintings of the patriarchs peering at the actors (and at us) done by graffiti artist Mak!One.
The two, in a credible and lively manner, recreate the foibles of youth and their growing up in cosmopolitan Johannesburg. They assume several characters — the white benefactor, the tsotsi figure, their mothers and fathers, and several other characters with, at times, admirable dexterity.
Kani recently made his debut on an American show, Life is Wild, and also played the character of Ariel in The Tempest, an international production. Ramabulana is an actor and Wits University Theatre graduate. The production was co-written by the two actors with the assistance of director Warren Nebe.